Hinduism 
Panchkanya
Women of Substance  – 4

Tara and Mandodari are parallels. Both offer sound advice to their husbands who recklessly reject it and suffer the ultimate consequence. Then both deliberately accept as their spouse the younger brother-in-law responsible for the deaths of their husbands. Thereby, they are able to keep the kingdom strong and prosperous as allies of Ayodhya, and continue to have a say in governance. Tara and Mandodari can never be described as shadows of such strong personalities as Bali and Ravana.

In Mahabharata, Draupadi and Kunti are not only closely related to each other as daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, but are also parallels. Shura of the Vrishnis gifts his daughter Pritha, when just a child, to his childless friend Kuntibhoja. We find this rankling deep within her, voiced pointedly after the Kurukshetra war while confessing about Karna’s birth. She finds no mother as she grows up in Kuntibhoja’s apartments and is handed over, in teenage, to the vagaries of the eccentric, irascible sage Durvasa. Her foster father warns that should she displease the sage, it will dishonor his clan as well as her own. Well endowed, as her name Pritha connotes, she was strikingly lovely, for Kuntibhoja exhorts her not to neglect any service out of pride in her beauty. Later, four gods and one mortal respond with alacrity to her invitation. The abdication of responsibility by Shura and Kuntibhoja results in the birth of Karna, of which they remain blissfully unaware.

Kunti, like Ahalya, is curious. She wishes to test whether Durvasa’s boon really works. Perceiving a radiant being in the rising sun (referred to in Chhandogya Upanishad too), she invites him, using the mantra. Surya, like Indra, will not return unsatisfied. He cajoles and browbeats the nubile maiden, assuring her of unimpaired virginity and threatens to consume the kingdom if denied. Mingled desire and fear overpower Kunti’s reluctance and she stipulates that the son thus born must be like his father.

Kshirodeprasad Bidyabinode struck home in his Bengali play Nara Narayana (1926) with his succinct yet ever so profound description of this encounter put on Karna’s lips:

“a maiden’s misstep – a god’s prurient curiosity,  
a virgin’s curiosity and his shameless lust.” – IV. 3 (my translation)

Kunti wins two boons from the encounter: her own virgo intacta and special powers for her son. In this she is remarkably akin to her grandmother-in-law, Satyavati, to Madhavi, daughter of Yayati, the Lunar dynast, and to the Yadava Bhanumati who, too, has Durvasa’s boon that, if raped, she will regain her virgin status.

As the adolescent dark fisher-girl Kali (later known as Satyavati) plies the boat across the dark river Yamuna with her lone passenger, the sage Parashara, he presses her to satisfy his desires. Finding him importunate and afraid that he might upset the boat in midstream, she agrees on two conditions: her virginity shall remain unimpaired and the disgusting fishy body-odour must be removed. Thus Matsyagandha turns Yojanagandha-Gandhakali and to captivate, later, Shantanu, king of Hastinapura.

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